Does Pain Rob Your Sleep?
A restful sleep is invaluable. But for many people it’s often not easy to get. When it comes to being productive, the cloudy feeling that comes from getting less than your required rest prevents you from performing at your top level.
A comprehensive look into just how important it is to get the recommended six to eight hours every night was compiled by the Atlantic. They showed evidence that suggests the lack of sleep can cause a wide array of chronic health problems, like hypertension, weight gain, diabetes, bipolar disorder, and psychosis. Because of sleep's important role in the regulation of hormones like dopamine, epinephrine, and serotonin, sleep loss can wreak havoc on your emotional well-being, often resulting in symptoms that resemble those of manic depression.
In patients who have been sleep deprived for long periods of time, as well as those who get between four and six hours of sleep for days on end, there are serious impacts to cognitive function like concentration and memory as well as the immune system.
Those who suffer from chronic pain, like from carpal tunnel syndrome, are usually sleep deprived. Whether the pain can rob you of sleep or the lack of sleep makes the pain worse is not understood. Pain and sleep are connected, says sleep expert Dr. David Neumeyer. Chronic pain is very common in the population and even more common in people who have poor sleep. That forms a vicious cycle because pain affects your ability to sleep, and the lack of sleep makes the pain seem worse.
Precisely how sleep and pain are connected varies from person to person. You must determine if the pain is a manifestation of a sleep disorder or if the pain is made worse by the poor quality of sleep.
It’s hard to improve sleep in people with chronic pain because they often don’t want to (or just cannot) take any more pain drugs. And of course, most such drugs like Aleve, Tylenol, and Advil are not intended for chronic use. Many of these individuals are already taking medications to treat their pain disorder. Further, certain prescription sleeping pills can interact with their pain medications, making the health situation much worse.
If you have chronic hand pain due to carpal tunnel syndrome, taking medicines for pain is not the answer. You must attack the root cause of the problem, which is tendon inflammation. One of the very best ways to do so is with myofascial release massage.













